To an extent, I can sort of understand how they may want to introduce laws to combat threatening or abusive messages even if I completely disagree with the whole concept, but this new proposal would make it an offence to cause "annoyance" or "Inconvenience"? WHAT? How the blind fuck can you "inconvenience" someone on Twitter?

My understanding of the word "inconvenience" is to put someone out in a minor way. If I lock the front door and insist on visitors using the back door [which I do anyway] that could be construed as an inconvenience? If my oil delivery lorry blocks the lane and stops a neighbour from driving out, that is an inconvenience? In other words, an inconvenience is a harmless mild annoyance and can hardly be classed as life threatening.

Yet our illustrious gumbint want to make it a criminal offence to inconvenience someone on Twitter, where I can't see how that can be physically possible in the first place.

As for "annoyance", well I would spend the entire rest of my life in court on that one, as there are very few who don't annoy me on Twitter. The very definition of Twitter is an annoyance and vice versa.

I have long maintained that offence cannot be given, only taken, and I would apply that rule to annoyance or even [somehow] inconvenience. Social media is essentially a written message which is incapable of harming anyone. It's just words, for fuck's sake. I get the occasional abusive mail and I do one of three things. I delete or bin them without reading them; I keep them for a while for the laugh or if they are exceptionally good I add them to my golden collection of my best abusive messages. I don't think that in the history of the Interweb a word has jumped of a screen and physically harmed someone, but correct me if I'm wrong.

When they start up a film on television they usually start with a warning for the feeble that the film may contain violence, "mature themes" or strong language [Is there anyone else out there who shouts “fuck off” at the telly when they warn of bad language? I know I do]. Maybe the feeble brained should put one of those warnings on their computer screen? Do they really seriously think that the Interweb is nothing but cute kittens, pink fluffy recipes and messages from people saying what they had for breakfast?

The whole joy of the Interweb is that anything goes. There is little censorship so the feeble brained are almost guaranteed to be offended, feel threatened and maybe [somehow?] inconvenienced.

I have a very simple message for them that even their glimmer of intelligence may grasp –

If you don't like what you read then just switch the fucking thing off.

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An Inconvenient Truth — 2 Comments

Makes me want to get into my old Twitter account and send something narsty to those two idiots that are proposing this bill to your government. Unfortunately, I can't seem to recall my Twitter username of password so I'll just have to give it a miss.

Shame indeed! That Lorraine Higgins one [if I remember correctly] is one of the Professionally Offended. She goes on line whinging about tighter controls on the Interweb and then recoils in horror when she actually gets negative replies.